November 29
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1951
The first US underground atom bomb test, designated Uncle, is detonated. The low-yield 1.2 kiloton bomb is detonated seventeen feet beneath the surface of Frenchman Flat, in Nevada as part of Operation Buster-Jangle. It leaves an eighteen hundred foot diameter crater one hundred feet deep.
1961
The first US satellite carrying an animal is launched by Mercury-Atlas 5 from Cape Canaveral. The passenger, a five-year-old chimpanzee named Enos, orbits the Earth twice over the course of three hours and twenty minutes. During the mission, Enos carries out the lever-pulling performance and psychological tests that he had been conditioned for over the past sixteen months. Enos performs the tasks with a high degree of accuracy, receiving shocks for the minimal number of incorrect answers. Even when the controls malfunction and Enos begins receiving consecutive shocks for correct answers, the frustrated chimpanzee continues to the proper sequence through the end of the flight.
1965
Canadian Space Agency launches the satellite Alouette 2.
1972
Nolan Bushnell and Al Alcorn, co-founders of Atari, wheeled the first Pong stand-alone coin-operated arcade console into Andy Cappa’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California USA. Instead of pursuing established manufacturers, Bushnell decided to manufacture Pong himself. Bushnell distributed Pong along the pre-existing arcade routes he and Ted Dabney had worked to keep Atari afloat while their first game was being created. It was his boldest move yet and would ultimately prove successful. He leased an old roller rink in Santa Clara and converted it into a production line. Each machine took in around US$200 a week, which was nearly four times what other pinball games and jukeboxes earned on the same routes. Pong will go on to be the first commercially successful video game, this day is widely marked as the first nail in the coffin of pinball era. Carl Sagan will write that, As a result of Pong, a player can gain a deep intuitive understanding of the simplest Newtonian physics.
1975
The name Micro-soft (an amalgam of the words microcomputer and software) is first used in a letter from Bill Gates to Paul Allen.
1996
A woman in Aurora, Illinois is charged for punching another shopper in the head while fighting over the last Nintendo 64 video game system in a Best Buy store.
Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) announces that the company has shipmented ten million units of the PlayStation game console worldwide. The total sales include 4.2 million units in Japan, 3.45 million units in North America, and 2.35 million units in Europe.
1999
AMD releases the 533MHz K6-2 processor. Price: US$167
AMD releases the 750MHz Athlon processor, fabricated with 0.18-micron technology. Price: US$799
The General Electric Company (GEC)/Marconi sells its Electronics Systems division to British Aerospace.
2002
Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly files an appeal of the ruling US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly made on the settlement of the antitrust case against Microsoft.
2005
The National Institute on Media and the Family release a report characterizing the video game industry-operated rating system beyond repair.
Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) releases an update for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) in the US via Internet connection, Memory Stick, or Universal Media Disc (UMD) disc. The update adds Really Simple Syndication (RSS) version 2.0 for audio streams and Windows Media Audio file playback.
2008
Samir Abadalah files anti-trust against Microsoft claiming the software company charges a third or more for software outside the country.
Microsoft starts talking to Yahoo! about their search business. Yahoo! has a 20 billion dollar business.
